Nostrum(damus)
The computers that can map the Zika and Ebola genomes, fight cancer, find an Aids vaccine, investigate climate change and prove the existence of gravitational waves.
11 September 2017
Imagine a computer doing 13 677 trillion operations a second. A computer that’s comprised of 3 400 Lenovo servers connected by 48 kilometres of wire and cables. A computer that has 48 racks with 3 456 nodes and in these nodes there are two Intel Xeon Platinum chips with 24 processors with a staggering processor total of 165 888, all connected by more than 60km of high-speed network cabling. And every bit and byte is housed in, quite possibly, the most beautiful place that a computer has ever been able to call home – the Torre Girona Chapel.
This stunning 19th century church sits on the outskirts of Barcelona on the campus of the Polytechnic University of Catalona and was used as a Catholic church as recently as 1960. It was deconsecrated in the 1970s and has become the extraordinary home to the world’s most extraordinary machine – the MareNostrum 4.
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